The end of the world?

I19

I don't believe we're that close to the end of civilization as some people would have us believe in terms of an ecological crisis. I think here, where we're situated, it'll be a long time before we feel the worst effects of that. I don't think that's true everywhere and what that leads to remains to be seen I guess but I don't think here that's imminent, at least that's my impression….Maybe I am more confident that I'm going to see the end of the world in some sense than I actually am that I'm going to see the end of capitalism.

Acting to win

I18

The left is very intellectual and we have these complicated explanations for things and I really think we need to boil it down more, without losing the substance of it….I think that the left needs to stop feeling like a perennial loser and start acting more like the obvious winn[ing] choice.

Beginning with the basics

I11

I like Food not Bombs because I think that having food and...sharing food is... one of the most...basic things. If we can do that then we can do everything else...or we can work towards doing everything else for ourselves too.

Talking – or not – about patriarchy

I26

A really sad truth...is that when you start talking about patriarchy, people shut down.

Memories of struggle

I1

Here in Nova Scotia we're losing all kinds of memory of our own history everyday as people pass away. In the late ‘80s, as an undergrad student, I had a project [in] a labour history course I was taking….I went up to Cape Breton and interviewed folks in their kitchens around what was happening with the mine workers’ strikes in the ‘20s and ‘30s. The best folks died and I don't think I realized at the time how useful that stuff was. We don't have that even going on today and we're losing…[our collective] memory….we don't have a tremendous amount of intergenerational memory on what [struggles were] about, what [they were] fighting for, what the underlying basis [for them was.]

Organizing and alternatives

I24

If the goal is equality, for example, then you have to organize society in such a way that you're going to get that equality and you have to organize the economy in such a way that gives you that equality. That means that the very ethos of this economy has to be overcome, has to be destroyed because as long as the economy is running on the basis of profit, and accumulation of wealth, and growth we can never achieve equality because it's the antithesis of the system. On a political level we have to have a decentralization of power. I don't agree that we can achieve it through...spontaneous uprisings all over the place, I don't think that's going to get us anywhere. We need to see centralized organizations as facilitating the grassroots movements rather than dominating the grassroots movements.

Reimagining development

I31

To what ends are we growing this economy? I think there's sort of three fundamental objectives of development in the twenty-first century: low carbon because of climate change, adapting to climate change, [and] reconciling some of the differences that exist within the current system. We need low carbon development and we need to create food security, energy security, and robust, resilient systems that people will be able to provide for their needs, and provide for their families, and so on. It's pretty simple. It's not growing the economy, because that's what got us into this mess in the first place.

Talking strategically

I15

The discussion that's had around diversity of tactics is shallow. I think that we…[talk so much] about tactics that we don't ever talk about strategy and I don't necessarily think that diversity of tactics, writ large, is a strategy in itself….If I say that we accept a diversity of tactics, there [are still] obviously some tactics that [some] people support more than others and I think that we need to do better to define what we mean when we say…‘diversity of tactics’ because we never mean all tactics….[T]here's always people who think that engaging with government is selling out and there's always people who think that breaking windows is violence.

Plugging into radical politics

I15

Discussion often degenerates very quickly and is not about trying to find...strategic solutions to problems but rather is about getting defensive and wanting to yell about why your strategy is the best and I don't want to engage in that kind of debate. I don't really have any time for it because I think that our strategy right now should be to be talking to people about what's fucked about the system that we live in….[How] are you going to plug people into radical political movements? We're at a point where there's not a lot to plug people into...that's meaningful, that's consistent, that's going to enact actual social change. What we need to be doing is building people’s understanding of why the system that we're living under is the root of the problems that we're facing.

Living collectively without the state

I19

I don't think we can get that far if we keep getting concessions from the state….What do I think is the way forward? I think...we have to be more creative about thinking collectively to get things done. Being able to imagine that it actually is possible that we can get things done without the state or whatever other institution it is that we're talking about.